N Man's problems were set alight by a tooth growing in his nose

A man has a completely unexpected diagnosis after he told his doctors that his left nostril was stuffy, dull and his ability to smell. lost.

The cause was not a virus. This was also not the result of a bacterial infection. Earlier, doctors got a passive tooth in the man's nose.

The nose is no place for a tooth. So, doctors use a pair of pliers to extract the pearl white, according to a case report published on February 21 in BMJ Case Reports magazine. [27 Oddest Medical Case Reports]

Prior to the bizarre diagnosis, the 59-year-old recent steroids tried to treat his nose. When it didn't work, he visited the department of otorhinolaryngology (ear, nose and throat) at Aarhus University in Denmark. There's a CT scan showing a slime-covered mass on the floor of its nasal cavity, the passageway through which the air breathes through the nose.

The man's doctors immediately suspected that the man had either dermoidal cysts – a growth that some people are born with contains structures like hair , teeth, fluid or skin glands, or a complicated tooth – one that has been found to grow normally in the mouth.

The man immediately had an operation to remove the mysterious clot. # 39; An investigation into the mass has become obsolete cover old tooth, covered with inflamed nasal tissue.

Doctors used an endoscope (a flexible tube with an attached light and camera) to take this photo before they pulled out the tooth from the man's nose.

Credit: Copyright 2019 BMJ Case Studies

It is not quite clear why the patient developed the anomaly in his nose. Cases like this one are rare, occurring only in 0.1 to 1 percent of the population, and more commonly in men, the doctors wrote in the report. Sometimes teeth in a person's nose may grow due to trauma or infection affecting any area. Developmental problems such as a split lip or cleft palate can also cause severe teeth to grow in the nose, the authors noted.

"In our case there was no clear explanation," the doctors wrote in the case report. The patient experienced a facial trauma in his youth (both his jaw and nose were broken), but the doctors said this injury probably did not grow the tooth in his nose.

Instead, it is likely that the man had. the tooth in his nose for most of his life, but he just started experiencing symptoms when the area was inflamed.

Dr. Alex Farag, assistant professor of otolaryngology and head and neck surgery at the Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center in Columbus, Ohio, who was not involved in the case, said the report was a "reminder that" you always should think open when you think about chronic sinusitis and what the causes may be. "

Generally, cases like these are pretty scarce," said Farag to Live Science. However, the man's symptoms fit with the eventual diagnosis: a foreign body in the sinuses will indeed affect how well the sinuses function, he said.

Often, a patient with symptoms like this is included, including congestion in just one nostril, odor loss and chronic nasal discharge – doctors first try to treat them with drugs, such as antibiotics, antihistamines or steroids. If these treatments do not work, a medical image scan, such as a CT scan, can usually identify the problem, Farag said.

One month after the man's surgery he recovered and he no longer experienced symptoms, the doctors said in the report.